FPs Gain Key Leadership Roles in AMA

Family physicians supported by the Academy are rising to key positions within the AMA and are helping renew it, says FP Edward Langston, M.D., of Lafayette, Ind.

The Academy nominated Langston to the AMA Board of Trustees in 2003; he won election. On June 14 of this year, immediately after the annual meeting of the AMA House of Delegates in Chicago, the AMA board chose him as its chair-elect for one year. The AAFP already has announced Langston's candidacy for re-election to the AMA board in 2007, and, if he succeeds, he will chair that board for one year, beginning next June.

In addition, FP David Swee, M.D., of Piscataway, N.J., a candidate endorsed by the AAFP, was elected to a four-year term on the Council on Medical Education by the AMA House of Delegates June 13.

"We've created a new atmosphere at the AMA, one that makes family physicians want to be involved," says Langston. "We now have a family physician on every major council and several other groups within the AMA." In fact, he says, the board includes himself and Immediate Past President J. Edward Hill, M.D., a family physician in Tupelo, Miss. In addition, the Council on Medical Education has two FPs, including Swee; the Council on Medical Service has three FPs; the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs has one FP; and the new chairs of the Council on Legislation and the Organized Medical Staff Section are FPs.

"There are those who only remember the AMA of the past -- focused on physician issues and its own organizational issues," says Langston. "I tell family physicians, 'Take a look at what we're doing now at the AMA.' We're always asking whether what we're doing is good for the patient, just as the AAFP does. Many of us (candidates) ran as reform candidates, and the AMA is now focusing much more on the patient and on practice issues."

The AMA has clout in Washington, D.C., says Langston, "and, frankly, we work hand-in-hand with the Academy in advocacy. The agenda of the AMA is in harmony with the agenda of the AAFP."

Daniel Ostergaard, M.D., AAFP vice president for international and interprofessional activities, notes, "The Academy's agenda includes physician workforce reform with family physicians as the base of the health care system in this country." The AMA House of Delegates this year took action in support of better pay for primary care physicians, says Ostergaard. "That enhances our ability to continue collaborating with the AMA."

According to a report on activities during the recent AMA House of Delegates, by adopting a recommendation from the Council on Medical Education Report 12, the AMA House called for the AMA to "encourage physician reimbursement changes which would make generalist physician practice more attractive."